In planning any calendar printing challenge, the obvious fact to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For the standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar will not be in the long run person’s palms earlier than January 1, 2014, they may have already got found an alternate. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the consumer’s hands close to the beginning of faculty if it is going to be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you timeline for the whole mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s fingers? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it needs to be comparatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and decide by what date you have to to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you’re mailing them out to your clients or members; in that case you just have to be sure to enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse deal with mailing the calendars – it’s going to in all probability be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they’ll want and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more difficult. How a lot time you need for sales relies on your gross sales strategy. Are you promoting at a local competition or different event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, however remember the fact that you may be better off should you can promote at a number of occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you expect. Or possibly you might be having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, you should permit a minimum of two weeks, and preferably up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their very own totally different schedules, and a few will want reminders and encouragement.
For those who print a calendar that you just plan to sell, it’s best to remember to develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Marketing doesn’t have to add to the overall period of the calendar undertaking – you can and may begin marketing through the planning and manufacturing levels of the mission. Nonetheless, if you wait to begin advertising and marketing until you’ve gotten the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit at the very least a few additional weeks, possibly extra, on your advertising and marketing message to reach the meant viewers and motivate them to purchase.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing mission starts if you hand off all the photos, text, logos, promoting, and so on. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner you probably have a selected deadline). When you anticipate last-minute modifications or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then it is best to probably enable a little further time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
